Margaret Hamilton, Apollo software pioneer, dies at 90

Margaret Hamilton, the American scientist who led development of the computer system used by NASA's Apollo lunar program, has died at 90, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said Wednesday.

MIT said Hamilton, who taught at the university from 1959 to the mid-1970s, died on September 30. The university called her a computing pioneer.

Olivier de Weck, interim head of MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, said Hamilton was a software engineer when the field was still young and led a team working on one of the most complex systems then attempted.

NASA chief Jared Isaacman paid tribute on X, calling Hamilton “a pioneer whose work helped make Apollo and humanity's first journeys to the moon possible.”

Hamilton was born in Indiana in 1936 and studied mathematics before moving to Boston in 1959. MIT said she first worked in meteorology before joining a laboratory in 1965 that was recruiting people to develop software to send a man to the Moon. The university said she was hired as the Apollo project's first programmer at MIT and its first female programmer.

By 1968, MIT said, Hamilton was assistant director in charge of Apollo's Command and Service Module team, with more than 400 people working on Apollo software.

NASA credits Hamilton with helping make onboard systems more robust. The agency says her software intervened about three minutes before the Apollo 11 Eagle lander touched down on the Moon, overriding a faulty script and allowing the mission to continue safely.

Jerry Wohletz, chief executive of Draper Laboratory, said Hamilton's leadership and work on Apollo's onboard flight software helped ensure astronauts landed safely on the lunar surface and returned home.

Hamilton received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from former president Barack Obama in 2016. She later published more than 130 papers and founded the software companies Higher Order Software and Hamilton Technologies.